Smashing idols with care

I worry we have made this idolatry thing too simple.

I notice it when I hear people speaking of counselling as though it involves just three easy steps. Step one: identify problem. Step two: embark on an idol hunt to uncover whatever is taking the primary place in a person’s heart. Step three: urge person to stop loving said idol.

So, for example, the workaholic just needs to see how work has claimed their hearts and stop loving it. The sports fan similarly must stop loving their team, and competitive types stop loving success. Easy.

Not that easy

Only it’s not. Not easy, and not biblically accurate either.

The problem becomes clear when we consider how these three steps might work with an over-jealous husband. Step one would identify the problem as excessive jealousy. Step two would hunt out the idol and reveal how this man’s heart is ruled by a desire for his wife’s affections. That would lead, Step three, to the conclusion that the solution is to stop loving her! Now that doesn’t sound right.

I’m not suggesting we abandon the language of idolatry. It is, after all, one of the Bible’s favourite ways of describing sin. Paul says we have ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator’ (Romans 1.25). John concludes his first letter by saying: ‘Dear children, keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 5.21). Idolatry is a vital Bible category. We have just made it all too simple. And when it comes to the sinful workings of the human heart, the one thing we can be sure of is that it’s not simple.

Factory in the heart

The reformer Calvin helps us find a way forward when he observes that the human heart is a factory of idols. In saying this he means that we have an almost boundless capacity to generate idols which we then worship. Trying to hunt out idols and exterminate them is, then, like tackling a forest fire with a water pistol.

It just won’t do the job. No sooner have we attended to one idol than another will pop up elsewhere.

Calvin helps us some more when he describes the love we have for idols as inordinate. Which doesn’t mean our love is too strong, but that our love is wrongly ordered. The object of our love has taken a place that it doesn’t deserve. We create an idol whenever the love we feel for something rises to the point that it occupies a place higher than our love for God.

The problem

You see the problem with telling a workaholic to stop loving work or a competitive type to stop loving success is that you are asking them to stop loving something good. Work is a blessing – just ask the unemployed how it feels to be deprived of it! And why not love success? It would be very odd to love failure! And, most obviously of all, a husband must love his wife. The problem lies with the order – with allowing something to come to be loved more than God.

What’s the answer?

OK. So, the answer is to throttle back on my love for my wife? I should wind back the dial until my wife sinks below my God in the ladder of my loves? No! That’s not the answer. Instead of dialling back my love for my wife, I need to dial up my love for God. I need a devotion for Christ, a delight in Christ and a passion for Christ that far exceeds all other loves. And that happens when I truly see the glory of Christ and the scale of his love. Then my love for my wife or my work (or any other good thing for that matter) won’t be reduced down but raised up.

The key, it turns out, is to love all things properly and that starts with a proper love for Christ. Now that is counsel worth giving – but it is anything but simple.